A 17-year-old Sydney girl with leukaemia was ordered to visit Centrelink in her wheelchair so staff could “sight her” despite her mother’s protests that she was immunosuppressed.

The Centrelink visit was one of several attempts Maddison Delaney and her mother Renee have made over the last 18 months to qualify for a Health Care Card, all of which have been rejected.

Ms Delaney said the family had been caught in a bureaucracy black hole, where her daughter was either deemed too old or too young or “not sick enough” for a Health Care Card that would make Maddison’s chemotherapy medications cheaper.

“One thing that really annoyed me was when she had no immune system - she was bald, she was in a wheel chair with a mask on - the people at Centrelink said, ‘I’m sorry you need to come down, we need to sight Maddison’,” Ms Delaney told nine.com.au

“For her to have to do that was so degrading and unnecessary.

“We had medical certificates, we had doctors’ certificates to say what her diagnosis was. They didn’t need to sight her and they felt really bad too, but their hands were tied because of the bureaucracy.”

Maddison Delaney (Supplied)

Maddison this week started an online petition protesting against the difficulties she and other cancer patient’s families have experienced in qualifying for a Health Care Card. The petition has already attracted more than 6800 signatures.

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After being diagnosed with leukaemia in October 2016, the Year 12 Northern Beaches student went through eight months of gruelling intensive chemotherapy at the Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick.

Maddison’s medication was covered by Medicare while she was in hospital, but once she became an outpatient in June last year her family were forced to foot the bill for her “maintenance” dosages of chemotherapy, which will continue until the end of the year.

“We don’t want money from Centrelink, we literally just want this Health Care Card which would help with the medication costs. I reckon we have tried to apply for it about five times,” Maddison told nine.com.au.

“We would call up, and as soon as we said look this is what has been happening, the Centrelink workers were amazing and they would try to help us out.”

“When they would reject us they would be really upset about it. They actually have actually been telling us that as Centrelink workers they have been campaigning internally for a card for cancer patients.”

“Just a month ago I got a call from Centrelink and the guy I spoke to was lovely but he said look, you don’t have enough of a disability. And then we got another one saying because I don’t have a terminal illness, and that I’m going to get better and that my treatment is going to end in a year, they don’t really want to give it to me.”

Maddison estimates that her family has been spending a few hundred dollars a month on medications for her.

“It’s not too expensive but it adds up. I think we are lucky because dad has a business and we are pretty financially stable but some parents, like my mum did, quit their jobs when their children are so sick,” she said.

“And there are other people who don’t have that much financially. The campaign isn’t just for me, it’s for people who have been struggling overall with it.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Human Services told nine.com.au in a statement:

"The department has made contact with Ms Delaney’s family to ensure she is receiving all appropriate support and payments."

"The department recognises medical conditions can have a significant impact on people’s lives, however, we do not have any discretion to provide payments or concession cards outside the criteria set down in legislation."

It is understood that under the department's rules, individuals are not eligible for the Health Care Card unless they are receiving benefits from Centrelink.